


Penchant (The "Poetry" Remix)

by kelly_chambliss



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, POV Female Character, Pre-Femslash, Remix, Remix Redux, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelly_chambliss/pseuds/kelly_chambliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven of Nine reveals a penchant for poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penchant (The "Poetry" Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miri Cleo (miri_cleo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miri_cleo/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/83386) by [cleo (miri_cleo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miri_cleo/pseuds/cleo). 



> Dear Cleo -- Janeway/Seven was one of the first pairings I wrote in the VOY fandom back in 1999, and I really enjoyed the chance to return to these characters. Thanks for a great assignment.
> 
> \---
> 
> Lines in italics are from the original story.
> 
> The quoted lines of poetry come from Lord Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and Sara Teasdale's "Dark of the Moon."

"Come."

The captain's voice sounded clearly through the intercom, and Seven of Nine entered Janeway's quarters as soon as the door lock disengaged. It was by no means unusual for the captain to ask for the day's astrometrics reports to be delivered to her private rooms, nor was it unusual for her to be gazing out of her viewport when Seven came in.

But it _was_ unusual for the captain to delay her response to Seven's request for entry, and today, there had been a five- and seven-one-hundredths of a second pause between the sound of the door chime and Janeway's answer. Something was evidently distracting her.

The room was dark, and in the twelve nanoseconds that it took Seven's ocular implant to adjust after the brightness of the corridor, the captain looked almost two-dimensional, a black silhouette outlined in the faint silver of starlight.

"Captain, I have the astrometrics reports," Seven said, not because she thought Janeway would be unaware of the reason for her presence, but because humans expected conversational interaction even in professional encounters.

"Put them on the table, please," Captain Janeway said, still without turning from the viewport. Seven did so, but before she could depart, the captain added, "Come here, Seven. Look."

Seven complied, joining the captain where she stood. All seemed normal, even to Seven's enhanced senses. Normal, that is, according to Starfleet standards. The stars appeared as numerous individual dots flowing past the windows, giving the illusion that _Voyager_ was moving cleanly through linear space. In actuality, Seven knew, the speed of their trajectory meant that all light coalesced to a single point; the stars would be seen only as a white burst in the center of the viewport, with the rest of space appearing as inky, motionless, unchanging blackness.

But Starfleet had long since discovered that such a static vision had adverse psychological effects on humans and other sentient species when they spent long periods in space. Hence the visual adjustments. The unreality had disturbed Seven at first, but now she was used to it.

"Look," said the captain again, and Seven dutifully looked. The view remained almost the same as it had four-point-eight seconds ago. The main thing that had changed was the captain's proximity; she now stood two-point-one centimeters closer than before, a fact that Seven, despite her usual aversion to physical contact, did not find unwelcome.

"What are we looking at, Captain?" she asked finally.

"The stars." As if she could feel Seven's bemusement at this statement of the obvious, Janeway laughed softly. "Well, not just the stars in and of themselves. I was thinking more about what the stars represent."

"And what is that?"

The captain spread her hands and then clasped them together, as if she were searching for words in the feel of her fingertips. "The point of it all," she said at last.

"Captain?" Seven let her tone of voice convey her confusion. This encounter was to be another lesson, then, another explanation of something human, and although the actual content of these lessons did not always seem relevant, Seven no longer objected to them. She did not even mind the social intimacy they fostered, at least not when that intimacy was with Captain Janeway.

_"It's the stars, Seven…it's the stars that prick us, that serve as the conjunctions of the universe, pulling us forward, telling us that there's more to come. And there's more still…and still…"_

Janeway's eyes were shining with more than starlight as she groped for further words. Seven would have been content merely to watch the play of silver and shadow across the captain's face, but she listened as Janeway went on: _"It's as if. . .It's as if the desire, the need to touch them all, to connect them all keeps us going. . .even when we've been singed at one, at two…even when we know we could be burned up entirely one day."_

Seven felt a familiar surge of exasperation as well as understanding. It seemed the human condition was always to be yearning for more, always reaching, searching, straining forward, so often while ignoring what had already been attained. Frustrating, and yet. . .that constant searching had turned humans into explorers and discoverers. It had given Janeway that expression she now wore, the one that made Seven willing to follow her wherever the stars took them.

_"I was…unaware you had a penchant for poetry, Captain,"_ she said, wanting to keep that look of fierce joy on the captain's face. Seven had read poetry in the databases, trying to find context for the fragments that had floated through the Collective, lines in English and El-Aurian and Voth and a host of other languages. The lines had become part of the Hive's memory, paths to a type of knowledge she had never really understood, left-overs of an individuality she had once thought she did not want. One of those lines came to her now: "Ye stars! Which are the poetry of heaven." What it meant, Seven was unsure, but it seemed to be a part of this music of space that so captivated the captain. She was about to quote the line when she saw Janeway shake her head.

"No," she said. _"It's not poetry… It's more than that. Look out there, Seven. Tell me what you see."_

Ah, so this was to be another of the captain's games. Seven had initially hated them, these encounters of question-and-answer guided by rules that only the captain understood. But now she almost relished them, for the games provided a chance to be taken whither Janeway would lead.

_"I see a constellation cluster. . ."_ she began. 

The captain stopped her, touching Seven's shoulders to make her try again. _"No. No calculations, no suppositions. Tell me what you see_."

Seven frowned, concentrating, trying to keep her mind on the question and not on the warmth of the captain's hands, the light pressure of her fingers, her closeness, her unique scent, a combination of citrus, coffee, and a sharp something that Seven thought of as the smell of human emotions.

It was all very. . .distracting.

_"I see light and darkness,"_ Seven managed at last, and was rewarded with the captain's smile and her pleased _"Yes!"_

Janeway spoke again, but Seven found that she could not focus on what she heard. She had an odd sense that the captain's real meaning was not in her words, but in those thin, expressive hands, one of which she was raising now, moving slowly towards Seven's face. The tips of her fingers were only five. . .no, four millimeters from making contact, and Seven closed her eyes, imagining that she already felt the velvet of the captain's touch. . .

And then a comm badge chirped.

Her eyes still closed, Seven listened vaguely to Janeway's conversation with the bridge about M-class planets and supplies and first-contact protocols. The captain's hand, she knew without looking, had been withdrawn.

Seven understood that she was inexperienced in matters of human emotion, but despite what the crew (and sometimes the captain herself ) seemed to think, she was not a child. She knew that the captain was attracted to her. It was true that initially, she had not quite understood Janeway's reactions, but now she did. She understood because when she was in the captain's presence, or thought about her, Seven had reactions of her own. She'd catalogued them -- the increased respiration, the galvanic skin response, that rush of tightness in her chest and her abdomen -- and she knew what these feelings meant: desire. The need to touch, to connect herself to Kathryn Janeway, even if it meant being singed. Even if it meant that she would be burned up entirely one day.

But the captain kept herself as distant as any star.

Seven snapped back to attention as Janeway addressed her once more. She kept her face impassive, unwilling to show the weakness of her disappointment. The answer she murmured was meaningless, and had it not been for her aural enhancements, she doubted she would have heard the captain's quiet response:

_"Wishes are like stars."_

It was a simile, Seven knew. A comparison. Poetry. It meant that wishes, like stars, were distant, unreachable, impossible to touch.

Or did it?

Poetry was open to interpretation. All the databases said so. Seven had once found such imprecision infuriating; now she was not sure.

Starfleet had found a way to make the stars in a viewport seem close; perhaps the same could be done for wishes. 

_"Wishes are like stars,"_ the captain had said. She may not have intended to be heard, but Seven replied nonetheless.

_"Then they are not always out of reach."_

Janeway nodded and was gone, leaving darkness and silence behind, but somehow, Seven was not disheartened. There would be other evenings, other conversations. Other stars.

Another fragment of human poetry came to her mind, and she spoke it aloud to the empty room.

"There will be stars forever, while we sleep."


End file.
